


loneliness in solitude

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, F/M, Fear, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Hotel Rooms, Kissing, Resolved Sexual Tension, Talking, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7641472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy and Coulson meet again, and don't say much, and then say many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	loneliness in solitude

**Author's Note:**

> I liked this quote: "Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone." Paul Tillich

In the early hours of the morning, not much has been said that they don’t both already know. They’re dancing around it, still.  Like they’ve always done.

Each one afraid to make the first flawed step.

She thinks it’s like pulling at the edge of a sweater.  Watching it unravel and still unable to stop from turning away as it unwinds. As you destroy the thing and then toss it aside.

That’s the kind of fear that grips her, when she thinks about the near past.  The deaths on her hands, and people dying because of her, and believing they should die _for_ her.

It’s like it’s all true.  That she is the rotten center of everything.  No matter how much she tries to make a connection, it all comes back to that.

She can still do plenty of good on her own.  She will, there’s not even a question of what she has to do.  For people like her, who don’t have the experience and the training to understand what has happened to them and how to harness it.

It’s the loneliness that’s felt so necessary, but been the hardest part.  

Telling yourself you’ve done this before sounds great.  Until you start doing it and realize that everything has changed.  You’re weaker now.  You’re needy in a way you’d forgotten.

Hive exploited that part of her that she wanted to bury, and gave her a lie that felt so real.

He reaches out first, and touches his hand to her arm, as she starts to fight off tears again.  She wants to jerk her arm away, to make it stop, to not be sucked back into his warmth and his kind eyes.

Even though there’s something so weary in them, the way he looks at her now.  Like he’s been fighting against it just a hard as she has. 

They’re so much alike.  She can never forget that.  What it feels like to have someone so close, that you might believe they could know everything about you worth knowing?

And still want to know, forever, the things they don’t yet.

She drops her eyes from his, and looks over at the empty beer bottles on the top of the hotel room dresser.   They’re all out of liquid courage, she guesses.  Probably for the best, or she might say or do something more destructive than her gift.

“It’s getting late.”

He’s stating the obvious, and he knows what she wanted him to know. That she’s safe.  That he’s not going to be able to find her unless she wants to be found.

That it’s better this way.

And the hope that they can help each other, in some small ways.  Not like it was before when they took for granted how helping each other was simply a part of them both wanting the same things.

It’s more than that, though.  They both know that now.  There’s no way of escaping the feeling of it hovering between them, even if they won’t say it aloud.

She starts to stand from the edge of the bed, and his hand slides along her arm, pushing up the sleeve of her shirt slightly.  An accident.

His hand holds her wrist lightly, but stopping her, staring as she twists to push the sleeve down. He lets go.

“Daisy.”  It sounds angry at first, or maybe it’s just shaken.  Shock, at the purple bruising on her arms.

And it’s too much right now, his kindness.  The sadness starting to fill his eyes as she quickly leans to grab her jacket, and slide it on.

“It’s fine,” she tells him. “They’ll fade.  I just-“

He stands up and starts to follow her towards the door and she works it open and then turns to tell him goodbye, when his hand pushes against it, slamming it shut.

“I can’t do this anymore.  It should be easier now, and it’s not. Seeing you, like this, does not make it easier.”

“Then I won’t do it again,” she promises him, touching her fingers back to the door latch.  “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to hurt you.  It’s the opposite.”

“I don’t want to do this without you in it.”

“You will though,” she says, turning her chin up to him, even though her fingers let go of the door. “I know you.  You will, because it’s the right thing to do.”

He squeezes his eyes shut tight, fighting off overwhelming emotions, closing her off from him.  It’s closer to the surface than she’s ever seen, and she thinks, that this is dangerous.

While she asks herself when was the last time someone touched him. Because he’s so human.  Coulson is _so_ human.

She throws herself against him, knocking him back a step, and wraps her arms around his neck, buries her face into the side of it as she hugs him tightly.

He gasps, carefully puts his hands around her back, and the tension in him lets go, as she holds him shaking against her.

It’s all the grief that he’s held onto.  For everything that he’s lost.  She’s not the only part of it, but she feels herself in it like gravity.  She wishes she could feel it for them both.

“I can’t lose you,” she whispers against his ear. “Please. Don’t ask me to-“

His fingers slide down her back, settling against her waist, like he’s not letting her escape quite yet, as he pulls his head back, then to the side to look at her.

He looks her whole face, up and down, like he’s making a careful study, before he answers.

“I would never try to take something from you, Daisy.”

Reading between the words he says: _that you don’t want to give_. This is about Hive. And Lincoln and Ward.  HYDRA. The way her mother died, _taking_.  Everything is so messed up, but not this.

Her fingers reach up slowly, cautiously, and brush along his face. The stubble of a beard on his jaw, and she sees his red-rimmed eyes widen.  A mixture of fear and want there? Like watching that bit of sweater begin to unravel.

Then she realizes she wants to know, if his tastes the same as her own.

Fingers wrap around the back of his neck, drawing their mouths together, and she holds them close just like that. Her lips parted, his breath against hers.

Desperate and reckless at all once.  That is how it happens. It’s like they collide then come crashing down together up against the door.

As she twists the front of his shirt in a hand, she feels the frown on his forehead, pressed against hers, and she angles her head and he sighs, relieved that he can have more access to her mouth.

His stubble scrapes against her. It’s not gentle. Not in the way she always thinks about knowing him.  But it makes her smile as his lips make marks down her neck.

That he tastes so much like her.  She runs her nails long the back of his neck, and he pins her against the door with his hips in reply.

Even now, they’re still on the same page.

And there's so much more she wants to know.


End file.
